House of Reckoning Read online

  Angie had just been to the grocery store, and all that was left in her purse was twenty dollars that was supposed to serve as the kids’ lunch money for the week. Still, better to have Mitch out of the house when the social worker arrived, even if it meant spending the kids’ lunch money on beer at the local tavern. “In my purse,” she sighed.

  “Thanks,” he said, riffled through her purse, came up with the cash, and opened the front door, letting a wet and muddy Pepper scurry in as he went out.

  “Noooo!” she moaned, but the storm door had already slammed behind Mitch and he was gone. “Come on, Pepper,” Angie said, gingerly lifting the filthy dog off its feet and taking it into the kitchen. “You stay in here and I’ll clean you up in a couple of minutes.”

  Perspiration dampened the back of her neck, and if she was going to finish cleaning the house—and the dog—she wouldn’t have time to take a shower herself.

  Which meant she had a choice: either the house wouldn’t look or smell as fresh as she wanted or she wouldn’t.

  Abandoning the house in favor of cleaning up herself and the dog, she headed back to the kitchen.

  She’d do what she could for Pepper and herself, and light a vanilla candle just before the social worker was due.

  It wasn’t much, but it might help.

  “Did you hear me, Sarah? That’s the school you’ll be going to. Aren’t you even going to look at it?”

  Kate Williams’s voice jerked Sarah out of the memory of her father’s gray and haggard face as she made her eyes follow her caseworker’s pointing finger. Caseworker, she thought. Where did they get that word? It sounded so … so … she wasn’t quite sure what. Sort of like she wasn’t a real person, but just some papers in a file. Why couldn’t they just call Kate a counselor or something like that? Of course it didn’t really matter, because in a few minutes Kate would drop her off at the Garveys’ house, and she probably wouldn’t see her much anymore. If only—

  If only!

  She had to stop using those words. How many times had she thought them over the last two months? A hundred? A thousand? If only her mother hadn’t died … if only her father had stayed home that night … if only she had stayed home that night. But none of that had happened, and she had to deal with things the way they were, not the way she wished they were. Now her mother’s voice echoed in her head.

  Wishing, wishing, doesn’t make it so!

  We have to deal with things they way they are, not the way we wish they were.

  She was right, Sarah told herself. And that’s what I’m going to do.

  Finally, she looked out the window and discovered that they were no longer making their way along the narrow road that wound through the farms from the prison to Warwick, but had come into the town itself.

  The school Kate was pointing out looked as if it had been there for at least a hundred years, but it was freshly painted in white with black trim, just like most of the houses around it. It was one large building with a big sports field next to it and a tennis court behind the parking lot. There was a flagpole in the center of the front lawn, and as they passed, a bunch of boys in football jerseys jogged around a track while cheerleaders practiced their moves on the infield.

  “I hear they’ve got a good team this year,” Kate said, her gaze following Sarah’s.

  “My dad played football,” Sarah said, then wished she could pull the words back.

  “You can visit him once a week,” Kate said. She turned left, and two blocks later Sarah felt like she was looking at a movie set.

  The town of Warwick had been built around a square, and in the center of the square was the kind of gazebo she’d seen dozens of times at the movies, but never before in actual real life. Across the street from the square, a bigger-than-life-size bronze statue of a man holding an old flintlock rifle stood in front of an ancient log cabin with a steeply pitched roof. “That’s Jeremiah Bigelow, in front of the first house built in Warwick, back in 1654. It’s a museum now.”

  “It’s pretty,” Sarah said, scanning the small shops that lined the street. Nowhere could she see a 7-Eleven, or a Minimart, or any of the other chains she was used to seeing elsewhere. And as they passed the corner of the square, she could see an old Carnegie library next to a post office with half a dozen cars parked diagonally in front. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” she went on, her spirits rising at the sight of the town that seemed to have come right out of the past. “Look!” She pointed at two old dogs relaxing outside a coffee shop, waiting patiently for their people. “The dogs aren’t even tied up!”

  Kate turned left again after they passed a large park with a jogging trail winding through the maple trees, and a large church with intricate stained-glass windows, a simple sign in front proclaiming it to be THE MISSION OF GOD. Then Kate turned right onto a tree-lined block and pulled up in front of a modest two-story brick home. “This is it,” she said. “Twenty-seven Quail Run.”

  All the anxiety that had been slowly easing as they drove through Warwick suddenly gripped Sarah’s stomach again.

  “Do you remember their names?” Kate asked.

  “Garvey,” Sarah said, struggling to concentrate. “Angie is the mother, and the kids are Tiffany and Mitch.”

  “No, Mitch is the father. The kids are Tiffany and Zach.”

  “Zach. Right.” Sarah tried to take a deep breath but couldn’t—it felt as if a band of steel had closed around her chest. Yet there was no choice but to get out of the car and face whatever was to come next.

  As Kate got her suitcase from the trunk, Sarah tried for the umpteenth time to find the words to the question she’d been wanting to ask Kate for weeks now. But every time she practiced it, the whole idea sounded stupid. How could she come right out and say something like, “Can’t I just live with you?” It seemed like such a simple question, and Kate probably had a dozen kids a day ask her the same thing.

  On the other hand, Kate seemed to truly care about her—she’d visited her in the hospital a lot more often than she had to, and most of those times didn’t seem to have any real reason to be there at all. And she’d brought her little things to help her through the rehab, too. Did she do that with a dozen other kids? Sarah wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer to that; besides, she’d already been enough of a burden on Kate.

  Sarah opened her door, but when she tried to put her right leg on the sidewalk, nothing happened; all the walking at the prison had stiffened not only her leg, but her hip as well. Using both hands, she lifted her right leg and swung it out and to the ground, then—with Kate’s help—hoisted herself to her feet. A moment later she stood unsteadily on the sidewalk, her hip aching.

  “Want your crutches?” Kate asked in an anxious voice.

  Sarah looked through the rear window at the two metal sticks she’d already grown to hate and shook her head. “No. I’m done with them.”

  Kate seemed about to argue, then appeared to change her mind. “Tell you what,” she finally said. “I’ll take them in and leave them with Angie Garvey, just in case. Okay?”

  Not wanting to argue—and knowing that Kate was right to insist on leaving the crutches—Sarah slowly limped up the front walk. Then, as Kate pressed the doorbell, she suddenly felt the hair on the back of her neck start to prickle, and a shiver ran through her.

  She was being watched.

  “You all right?” Kate asked.

  Sarah nodded, but the unmistakable feeling that someone was watching her grew stronger, and she glanced both ways down the row of houses facing the street.

  No one.

  But the feeling was still there. Steadying herself on the black wrought-iron railing that guarded the Garveys’ porch, she turned around.

  Across the street a boy wearing a parka and a backpack was staring directly at her, but before she could get a clear look at his face, he lowered his head and hurried down the sidewalk and around the corner.

  “Already turning heads?” Kate asked, following Sarah’s gaz
e in time to see the boy scurry away.

  Before Sarah could answer, the door opened and a tall blondish woman wearing a denim skirt and a bulky sweater opened the door. “Hello,” she said, nervously wiping her hands on the apron tied around her waist. “You must be Sarah.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Sarah said.

  “Well, come right in.” She held the storm door open. “I’m Angie Garvey.”

  Sarah’s right foot caught on the threshold as she stepped into the house and Kate caught her arm, steadying her before she fell to the floor.

  The glimmer of hope that Sarah had nurtured as they drove through the little Vermont village began to evaporate as she took in the Garveys’ living room. Though it was at least as large as the living room of the farmhouse—maybe even a little larger—it both looked and felt completely different. No art hung on the walls, the furniture was worn, and the carpet was badly stained. Where the living room at home had been filled with books and magazines, here there was only one small stack of books, and they were being used to prop up a corner of the sofa.

  A huge television took up one whole corner, and the furniture had been arranged so every seat had a view of the screen.

  Nothing—not one single thing—felt anything like what she’d grown up with, and a wave of homesickness threatened to crash through the thin wall of courage she’d been constructing to get her through the day. But just as she felt herself losing the struggle not to start crying, a small brown and white spaniel came skittering out of the kitchen and jumped up on her, almost knocking her over.

  “No, Pepper!” Angie snapped, snatching the little dog off the floor. “You can’t just jump all over people, especially our Sarah here.”

  Kate put out a hand to help steady Sarah, but Sarah stepped forward and held out her hands. “Can I hold him?”

  Angie hesitated a moment, then handed the wiggling little dog to her. Sarah let Pepper lick her all over her face, and though Kate laughed, Angie Garvey pursed her lips disapprovingly.

  “He likes you,” Kate said.

  “But you don’t know where that tongue has been,” Angie countered. “Maybe you should put him down.”

  But Sarah clung to the warm little dog. If she could just cuddle Pepper every day, maybe she could actually survive four years in this house.

  Maybe.

  Silence.

  The kind of silence Nick Dunnigan could barely even remember.

  All the voices in Nick’s head had fallen completely silent, and he knew exactly when it had happened: the moment when he’d first seen the girl with the bad limp getting out of the car and making her way slowly up the Garveys’ walk.

  He’d stopped and stared, and it took him a moment before he realized the voices had stopped. And then he found himself engulfed in a silence so profound, so welcome, so completely glorious, that he’d felt light-headed, almost dizzy.

  He felt as if he’d been touched by something special.

  An angel, perhaps, if such things actually existed.

  He’d watched as a woman carried a suitcase—one he was sure belonged to the girl—up to the Garveys’ house.

  The girl would be staying for a while.

  Maybe she’d even be going to school here.

  And maybe—just maybe—she’d be his friend. Even though he knew he shouldn’t be thinking it, memories of the way he’d been teased flooded his mind, and as he watched the girl limping painfully up the sidewalk, he knew that the same kids who had shut him out for as long as he could remember would shut this girl out, too.

  He could already hear them whispering to each other, see them pointing at her, and giggling at the way she walked.

  Maybe if he was nice to her—tried to befriend her—she wouldn’t turn away from him the way all the other kids did.

  He was still gazing at her when she turned around on the stoop almost as if she knew what he’d been thinking. Their eyes met for an instant, and then Nick dropped his head and hurried away, ashamed at even hoping the other kids might be mean enough to her that she’d have to become his friend.

  But as he started home, the voices began to protest. Yet they were different now. Instead of whispering to him to do the kind of terrible things he hated even to think about, it now sounded as if they were crying out for help.

  As if they thought this girl could help them.

  Was it possible? Of course not! They were just voices! It wasn’t as if they were real. They couldn’t be.

  Could they?

  Unable to stop himself, Nick turned back for one more look at the Garvey house before he turned the corner. The girl was gone; she had already disappeared inside the house, and the storm door was still settling in its catch, its pane of clouded Plexiglas still vibrating.

  Then one voice, louder than the rest, shrieked through Nick’s head and a great red streak appeared on the front of the Garveys’ house.

  He blinked, shook his head and looked away, trying to erase the hallucination.

  But when he looked again, it was still there. A huge red streak that ran across the entire front of the house.

  A streak the color of blood.

  Chapter Four

  “This is where you’ll sleep,” Angie Garvey said as she pushed open the door to one of the bedrooms on the second floor of the house, and stood aside to let Sarah enter first. “My Tiffany is only a few months older than you, and she’s been so looking forward to having you share her room.”

  Her hip was burning from the struggle to climb the stairs, but Sarah managed to show none of her pain as she stepped into the room, where she felt a chill that belied the words her foster mother had just spoken.

  All of Tiffany’s stuff had been moved to one side of the room, and Sarah could see that it was done quickly, as if whoever had cleared the other side waited until the last possible minute to do it. Posters of rock stars were taped to the walls around Tiffany’s bed, which was heaped with more stuffed animals and pillows than it could even hold; a teddy bear was sprawled facedown on the floor at the foot of the bed, and if her hip hadn’t been burning so badly, Sarah would have picked it up and put it back where it belonged. The wall behind the second bed—which would be hers—the empty bed—was as stripped of any decoration as the mattress was of bedding, though Sarah could see the marks on the wall where tape had been pulled off, some strips taking paint with it, others staying, along with the corners of the posters they had recently held to the plaster. The posters themselves were almost hidden behind the dresser, where someone—probably Tiffany—had shoved them after pulling them off the walls, and even now Sarah could almost hear the argument between Tiffany and her mother when she was told she had to make room for the new foster child.

  The girl’s anger was palpable enough to make Sarah shiver despite the heat in her hip. Well, maybe once Tiffany got to know her, it wouldn’t be so bad. Besides, who wouldn’t be mad at losing half their room to a total stranger?

  Angie put Sarah’s suitcase on the floor. “The bathroom’s across the hall, and I cleared out the second shelf of the medicine cabinet for you.” She smiled, but Sarah had the feeling it wasn’t easy for her. “I’ll leave you to your unpacking. Tiffany and Zach should be home any time.”

  Sarah nodded as Angie left the room, closing the door behind her. The moment she was alone, she started toward the bed, wanting nothing more than to throw herself onto it and sob.

  Which, she knew, wouldn’t change anything. Hauling the suitcase off the floor, she maneuvered it onto the bed while doing her best to ignore the pain in her crippled leg. Besides, maybe she was jumping to conclusions. Maybe she and Tiffany could become friends. “Give it a chance, honey,” she remembered her mother saying more than once when she was little and trying to avoid something—anything—unfamiliar. “Things are never as bad as they seem at first.” Her mother had always been right back then, and it might be true now.

  No sense expecting the worst.

  She opened her suitcase, took out a pair of shoes and her slip
pers, and put them carefully under her bed. Then she shook out her best white blouse and opened the closet door.

  The closet was stuffed so full of Tiffany’s clothes that there wasn’t so much as an empty hanger, let alone room to add any more clothes.

  She was still trying to decide what to do with the blouse—and the rest of her clothes—when she heard voices downstairs, then the sound of feet pounding up the stairs. A moment later the door burst open and a girl who looked at least two years older than her came into the room.

  “So you’re the girl we have to take care of,” she said, closing the door and leaning against it as she glared darkly at her. “I’m Tiffany, and this is my room. Not ‘our’ room. Mine. Get it?”

  “I—I’m sorry,” Sarah stammered. “If there’s another room—”

  “If there were another room, do you think you’d be in here?” Tiffany cut in. Finally, she left the door, pushed some of the stuffed toys on her bed aside and sat down. “Let’s get things straight right from the beginning.”

  “Okay,” Sarah said carefully.

  “I don’t want you here. I don’t want your clothes in my dresser, or in my closet, and I don’t even want your bed in my room. You’re only here because we need the money from the county, and as soon as my dad gets more hours at the prison, you’re gonna be out of here.”

  “I—I don’t want to be any trouble,” Sarah said softly, struggling to keep her voice from trembling.

  “Good. Then just don’t touch my stuff. Mom says you can have the bottom drawer in the dresser, but the rest of it’s mine.” Tiffany got off the bed and used her forefinger to draw an imaginary line between the two beds. “Just stay on your side of this line,” she said. She moved to the door and opened it. “And leave my dog alone, too.”